the first time, touched
us, otherwise strangers
delving within ourselves
our overt close encounters
past intimate imitations
of love’s labour lost and gained
we collide
again and again
crossing over, crossing under
energies focused at the hip
flowing through & into one another
endlessly
we release
feathers soaked
in each other’s essence

are you there?

listen, i'm going deaf, you can go on without me,
i need to wait out the post-sound cacophony in my ears,
to clear out the sonic clutter,
the finely-braided metal radio chains in my head, you know -

it's soothing, the sound of silence, it's bliss, that rich, negative space -

you go on ahead, and after the war,
the ringing detonations,
and the harmonic riots,
after the static on my tv is carefully rearranged
grain by grain into a colorless frame of the past,
a pointillistic polaroid,
maybe i'll catch up, that is,
if i can somehow hear the world again

have you ever felt a home in your bones?
safety in the way it cushions the weight of your moaning head
upon falling at it's thresholds
you want to know what tender feelings
you hold in safe places
but they
never question the way your severed vessel
still toes the shoreline,
roaming the foam licking at the crests
of crescent moons left in the remnants of crab shells
pressed into particle upon particle of scruples
unspoken in the weeks that forgot you

they rush ahead

and you stand stock stuck, still mustering
the guts of every animal they left on the beach
in the road, and you too leave them
for fear of that lethal touch
mistaking broken shards of beer bottles
for sea glass, some days you tried to remember
and forgot

they are savages
the agile hunger pains
gnaw at the bandages

but you still love, in nausea,
ad naseam, you study them, reverential
try to reference their satiation with fondness
still sunken in repugnance for your own likeness

you collect them like passengers
pieces of you and worlds unto their own kind
he says you are two of a kind
you think not, because he is one

each thrown to the riverbed below
becoming rocks filling up the moat
cranking down the drawbridge
over a river filled with sea glass
the true form of whom you have settled with
knowing you may never know

and in forgiveness you live with
the sickness of knowing nothing
and the sentience of understanding everything
and when you stand by the water
they tell you that your eyes have a brilliant glow
and you let them find you stunning
in a memory upon a time ago
you conceal yourself in the
minds of many

while the solecism in his praise
still rings heavy in your throat
two thousand
nine hundred
and sixty eight
miles away
from home

no,

i don't feel beautiful
but i feel dangerously effective

eyes tear from
the cold-cutting wind.
he told me,
"expect more surprises."
does my story make me
stronger?
branches peak through
the curtain-covered window.
sunlight stains the shadows
I look to hide within.
I suppose it was a time
of depersonalization.
A vulnerable feeling which
lead to a vow of silence.
After so long, I laughed
until I cried.
And when my hair grows
past that one freckle on my back,
I will know that
enough time has passed.

and tonight I think I love you—
and tonight I wrote that on your back.

and tonight I wish I didn't—
and tonight I told you that.

April 13th 12:28am

You must be a dream
and yet the lines on your hand
know the lines on mine